Worm Snippets and So On
by Teal Thanatos
Summary: Worm Snippets/Oneshots etc. Mostly Crossovers, all crossposted from the Spacebattles forums Creative Writing Section.
1. Cloudy with a chance of peace

He Had come out of nowhere for most of the capes. He had attacked with a slash of a finely wrought blade near a mans height and it had cut into the flesh of Leviathan like a knife through butter yet had left no damage behind but the scream of agony.

His spiky blond hair waved in the wind and in response to the water splashing harmlessly over him as the blue and copper ring on his finger glowed brightly. He waited, as if daring Leviathan to strike him down for just a moment until he waited no more and leapt forward and slashed his sword through Leviathan's chest as he dodged everything that Leviathan attempted to do to him.

Leviathan screamed again.

This time the gigantic beast stepped forward and swung at the blond man, its claws passing through him as if through naught but an illusion and the man feigned pain before returning to his stance.

He placed his sword upon his back with a flourish. Pulled his fists to his side and punched forward towards Leviathan, a crack of Thunder! a blast of light! and down from the heavens descended lightning that struck Leviathan and caused it to scream in pain and agony.

And Yet, again, no damage was seen on the great endbringers form. Nor was anyone else hurt in the electrified water.

The Tableau lasted for mere minutes, of too and fro attacks before a great corona of green light circled the sword wielding blond as he once again holstered his sword across his back.

And then he vanished. And so did everyone else.

What they saw next, was the stars above and the earth below, a dragon of mighty obsidian that rounded the curvature of the planet from the direction of the sun. A beast with six wings splayed out at different angles, the dragon's mouth opened. A corona of light surrounded the beams of energy as they combined into a mighty blue sphere. It's neck pushed forward towards the Earth and a beam that was so bright that it could not be looked at leapt forth and reached down to the planet below.

The clouds parted in a circle that was as wide as a city and Leviathan looked upwards.

The beam impacted and waves of flame and sheer power radiated outwards in a circle as a secondary sphere of fury lifted up from the initial explosion.

Leviathan rocked backward without a wound before his skin flashed a glowing miasma red and he faded from view.

And everyone returned to a landscape of fallen building and destroyed landscape over five hundred meters in radius.

He Drew his sword.

Some of those who re-appeared had been on buildings.

They fell.

Some died.

The man in blue, his golden blond hair looked and saw the dead and again he sheathed his sword and posed once more, a nimbus of green light erupting around him from the ground as arcane multi colored symbols drew into his body from a place unknown.

And a drop of golden something fell from the heavens above and landed, a ripple of space and time rolling out on the earth as it struck the ground, from this ripple a ball and rings of golden fire appeared.

Out of the dissipating golden fire was a bird of legend, instantly recognizable by all the Phoenix screamed as a rainbow arced above its glorious feathers and those who were dead were not.

And then he left.

He just walked away as if there was nothing special done here this day.

I looked at at the children, who were watching my bugs act out the scene as if it were there today. The golden Christmas beetles fled and hid under the mesh of the stage 'floor'.

They looked enraptured.

Worm / FFVII  
Name: Cloudy with a chance of peace.


	2. Who The Hell is this guy?

Metropolis wasn't like this. His world wasn't like it at all. Sure, they had terrible things, things that threatened the world... but they never succeeded. Here the bad guys were winning. The Jokers, the Luthors, the bloodsports. Worse here. The Jokers, the Jack Slash who could never be found and always one step ahead, the Nilbog he had been forbidden to take care of. The Luthors, the mad tinkers who became villains without compare and unleashed horrors untold, the bloodsports, racists with powers and capable of bringing others to their sphere of influence.

The Endbringers, that he couldn't quite get close enough to.

He'd been ordered away from taking on Simurgh by the Protectorate. He could understand it, a little. He was stronger than Alexandria and could easily overpower her. And he had many other things she didn't. But still... it rankled. There was something he could see, something that he could defeat. Leviathan and Behometh he couldn't, no matter where he looked on earth they were invisible. Hidden from his all seeing eyes.

That disturbed him.

The thought crossed his mind for a moment about possibly using his heat vision on the Simurgh, from outside of its range. But the the possibility of empowering it, as the sun did, was too great. At least that's what the upper echelons thought.

He'd been here four weeks. Long enough to talk to many of the tinkers that had breached dimensional boundaries, he knew that there wouldn't be a Superman back in Metropolis any time soon. If at all.

"Alexandria to Superman."

He took the radio transmitter from his belt and placed it to his neck, in the void between earth and moon he couldn't speak. "Yes" he mimed, the movements of his throat being translated into words and transmitted to the surface by the device created by Batman. "I'm here."

-

When the Leviathan attacked Brockton Bay, Superman wasn't called. But he heard. And saw. It took him nearly half a minute to cross the world from where he was working in Australia. His fist first dive into the end bringer smashed into it's shoulder, spinning it around as it was launched into the air and into the side of a building, a second punch from Clark saw it finishing it's journey and being flung out the far side of the building before it could react. Behind him, the capes evacuated the building quickly.

As superman's punches flayed the skin and flesh off the beast, he idly wondered why he couldn't see where they went. With the endbringer in front of him he could see it clearly, and turning his head he could see the disturbed silt and seabed from where it had emerged from the depths. A mistake. the Endbringer hit him, sending superman flying backwards and carving a trench into the ground, water rushed into trench and filled it as the endbringer thrashed as it stood and looked at him.

A blur appeared by his side and the world slowed... for everyone else. The man next to him pulled a medical kit off his back and spoke. "Are you okay?"

Superman looked at him for a moment, "I'm fine." looking around he could see they were in a bubble. "Are you doing this?"

The man nodded. "I'm Dispatch, I create a bubble of compressed time around myself."

Clark pondered that for a moment. "What happens if I shoot a laser out of the bubble?"

Dispatch shook his head. "It won't work."

"Time to go then." Superman braced himself against the compressed rubble, ready to launch himself forward. As Dispatch collapsed the bubble he launched himself back at the endbringer, only to take a watery image of a fist to the face, sending him tumbling back. Launching himself upwards Superman surveyed the scene for a moment, identifying what the endbringer was doing.

He launched himself back towards Leviathan, fists held tightly at his sides. The after image launched at him, his first fist smashed it into a spray of droplets, the Endbringer swung at him and tried to bite at the same time, only to receive an upper cut for it's troubles, sending it reeling backwards to take two more blows before it's tail struck him in the side, sending him flying upwards.

Another cape, Alexandria struck it while it was looking at him, she was flung away after a quick flurry of blows. Faster than what he had been doing. A blast of ranged attacks came from supporting heroes and Leviathan moved to attack them. Superman made his move, he accelerated to just under the speed of sound, his perception rapidly adjusting to the speed he was moving at, he relaxed a little bit and felt like a weight was no longer on his shoulders as he struck, a single downwards punch that cratered the ground around the Endbringer as it was smashed into the ground and laid prone by the force of his strike.

Opening his fist Superman remembered the horror he had felt as he read the histories of the Endbringers. The slaughter they'd each comitted, the innocents caught up in the attacks. Their lives ruined. His fingers and thumb penetrated the hide of the Endbringer and a chunk of flesh was removed. Moving as fast as he could, he removed piles of flesh, one handful at a time. He felt bone or cartilage under his hand and he grasped it with one hand as the other pulled back and punched again, smashing it under his fist.

-

Skitter looked on silently. The cape was almost a full body length inside Leviathan, other heroes were hitting the limbs wherever they could, doing whatever damage they could, but they couldn't approach too closely. Legend was attacking with beams aimed at the head while Alexandria was doing her best to destroy the damaged arm that Superman had struck first. Eidolon approached, his powers had just changed and now he was holding his arms out. A ring of _something_ appeared above Leviathan and descended. it touched Leviathans legs, tails and arms and where it did they were pressed down to the ground and held by the immense perceived weight of the ring.

Her bugs swarmed around her as the capes took the opportunity to attack the portions of the limbs that lay outside the ring, cutting off chunks of feet and claws.

There was nothing she could do.

-

**Topic: Leviathan Down/Who the hell is this guy?  
In: Boards ► News ► Events ►America  
Bagrat** (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)  
Posted on May 15th, 2011:  
Holy shit, I've never even heard of this guy and he solo'd Leviathan. Ripped both arms off at the shoulders, gutted it like a fish and didn't even have a wound on him afterwards. he's got to be Scion 2!

Anyway, Here's what I know, I've got some footage I'm uploading now which will back most of this up.

May 15th,  
He comes out of nowhere, hits Leviathan so hard that you can see the back of it's shoulder bulge outwards like a balloon.  
Gives a few hits, takes a few hits, get's thrown into the ground, get's intercepted by a speedster, they were in there for a pretty long time, nearly half a second by my frame by frame analysis.

Get's up, takes a few false starts and then finally just beats the shit out of Leviathan before he gets it down to a point where the other capes come in and start helping because Leviathan can't do jack.

While the other capes are keeping it down he has a chat with Alexandria, looks almost sweet, them talking while pulling bits of Leviathan out of it's guts.

Finds some huge gem or something in Leviathan (Screenshots of this part are attached.) and he punches it, doesn't break so he keeps on punching it. Evidently doing so so hard that it caused a Richter 5.1 earthquake that lasted for eight (count them!) minutes (check out how shaky the camera gets too).

Finally breaks the thing and Leviathan just stops. Like you flipped a switch or something.

So who the hell is the guy who did it? He's got a blue bodysuit, red cape and a red symbol of a S in a downwards facing triangle. Help me out guys.

**(Showing page 201 of 201)**

► **Laser Augment**  
Replied on May 16th, 2011:  
The Earthquake was pretty damned rough, it just didn't stop. I know 5.1 might not be that much, but it just didn't stop. A lot of Brockton Bay's been flattened. This superman, fuck, couldn't he have done something differently?

**End of Page. ****1****, ****2****, ****3****, ****4****, ****5**** … ****199****, 200**


	3. Planetary

The first time the Dragon Slayers had tried to steal one of Taylor's 'Armored Suits', they had run into a very nasty surprise.

Most notably, that they weren't suits. But instead, they were fully functional and fully automated drones. This hadn't mattered much to Taylor at the time. She had been in her Commander form and thus quite unemotional, but later it had bothered her a little bit when she reviewed the external logs and watched one of the dragon slayers get killed in a bloody explosion of gore.

The outrage of Saint when that had come out was incredible. He had started an online campaign to get her reclassified as an S class threat, the same as the Endbringers, Nilbog & The Sleeper. She'd been under attack quite often ever since, from villains to even elements of the PRT who bought into the propaganda.

If she was honest (and Taylor generally liked to be honest), they had a point. She could probably end the world by herself. Her offshore submerged construction facility was probably a good demonstration that she wasn't exactly as constrained as the PRT would like. But Leviathan's attack on Brockton Bay had seen it arrive heavily wounded by a submarine strike before he arrived - and that had resulted in a lot less casualties so Taylor felt very justified.

The Director hadn't figured out who had done that damage yet. But she expected to be caught out soon.

Her base, located near to Brockton Bay on government held land was receiving upgrades to her defences, which was making it harder to sneak out the occasional construction unit for secondary locations.

Plus, the PRT didn't like her static defences inability to identify friend from foe by shooting at anything that wasn't distinctly hers, which meant she had to keep them in the middle of her installation so they could have more discerning defences on the outskirts.

Which brought her back to the recording of one of the Dragonslayers being slain, a heavy laser impacting on the top half of the suit. The bottom riddled by large bullets from a half dozen Dox, her lightest mech.

She wasn't allowed to bring her machines into the city without strict restrictions now. They were just too lethal.

Even when she changed into her Commander body the PRT would place large safety caps over her arms. Reducing her to not much more than a big robot that could punch things. Slowly.

It was seriously irking her.

Especially as she couldn't really transport her units across the world to an Endbringer attack, they were simply… too slow. There really wasn't any upside to that.

All these frustrations led to one simple choice.

"I'm quitting."

Director Piggot looked at her. Then she narrowed her eyes and started glaring. "Not accepted." said the woman with a waspish voice. "Your contract clearly states you can't quit."

Which it did, as Taylor found out a few days before as she looked to discover how she could depart the Wards. Too bad. She wasn't letting that get in the way. Taylor's response let everyone know what she felt about that, "I don't care." declared the girl with a shrug. "I'm quitting, I'm going to build a fleet and hunt down Leviathan. Then I'm going to kill it."

While Taylor's alternate form could build great machines capable of doing a lot of damage, they were all very much war orientated and didn't have a lot of use outside of that. Plus, they were far too dumb not to walk on people - so when Leviathan struck brockton bay and had been driven off, the city had still received a bit of damage that she was useless against.

"If you go after Leviathan, you'll be out of our reach." Director Piggot begun slowly as she read Taylor's uncaring expression. "And when you are, the probability of Simurgh attacking to take a copy of your technology is too high for us to risk."

Taylor noted that Piggot's hand had vanished under the table. For a gun? an alert? not that it mattered. Ever since she had triggered, any damage to her simply resulted in her changing to her alternate form. In this room, large as it was, it would result in Piggot being crushed. "I don't think so, the Simurgh may have precognition, but it can precog that it will die if it approaches my defences." declared the teenager abruptly. "When I am on the ground, the Spinners will be my horde. My Hummingbirds will blot out the sky, my -"

The railgun, built underneath the room for this exact eventually, pointed upwards and fired. Director Emily Piggot had accepted herself as a collateral damage, had accepted that the city might be destroyed in the nuclear explosion that Taylor had predicted would occur upon her death.

Legend frowned as he turned away from the static at the end of the recording. "What's happened since?

Alexandra pushed forward a dozen sheets of paper as she responded. "Taylor has built up her defences. As she said, her hummingbird class of fighters actually do blot out the sky occasionally in their patrols over Brockton Bay. Her army surrounds the city and the docks have been repurposed into a shipyard."

Eidolon clenched his fists. "Every precog we have has said it's suicide to assault the city, no chance of success."

"What about Contessa, she should be able to do something." Legend asked plaintively.

"Doctor Mother has overruled that." Alexandra replied quickly. "precogs indicate that she may be the best weapon in the end."

The sixteen orbital launch facilities were actively building supported by ninety six advanced construction vehicles. As they operated, Taylor absently looked over the forces already in orbit.

Three Avengers, all that was left of the four hundred and eighty that had taken on the Simurgh.

A radar satellite that was barely functional.

A pile of debris that was falling down across the north american continent.

Yeah, there was going to be a few deaths there. Not too many hopefully.

Her secondary processor indicated that it would be between two and fifteen hundred, most of the debris was small or would break up in the atmosphere, but the confirmed kill list had hit forty five already.

So it was a huge surprise when Scion came to call.

It had started off with a bar of light flashing across her base, destroying nearly a thousand units and dozens of buildings in a single blast.

Taylor had immediately shifted into her human form and fled on a Peregrine. Behind her, she mentally controlled her army, attacking Scion en-masse with concentrated ground and air units, luring him over an anti-orbital emplacement. As Taylor overrode the controls ,firing the device at her own orbital Avenger, Scion was caught in the beam, immolating swathes of his body.

It wasn't enough to put him down. A burst of white light and he was whole again. A second firing damaged him again and a third before the device shut down, as no orbital units were present above it.

Taylor would have raged, had she not been busy holding onto the outside of a fighter as it fled.

Seventy two minutes later, her base was completely destroyed, much of Brockton Bay had been collateral damage as the golden man had not cared about toning down his destruction. The media would attempt to portray the destruction as Taylor's fault at first, but it was less than an hour for uploaded videos from survivors indicating that the damage to the city was entirely of Scion's make.

Not that Taylor knew any of that. As soon as she had landed, a woman in a suit had appeared and took her away. Her name was Contessa and she brought Taylor in to meet another person, who identified herself as Doctor Mother. After explaining their organization's goal to kill Scion and why, Taylor threw her lot in with their cause.

Constructing large bases on their Earth gave Taylor a large working economy to employ against Scion and the end bringers. Before a few days were out she had built a large mining and energy gathering facility stretching over the local landmass, an uninhabited north american continent. With the ability to simply take all the resources she needed, Taylor had built up a rather large army before realizing a critical problem.

Namely, the Doormaker couldn't make doors large enough for a lot of her things.

But, keeping a door open between realities revealed that her resources and commands flowed through the gateway, though she was warned if Scion approached the gateway they would close it.

As soon as she was ready, Doctor Mother sent her to an island in the pacific. There Taylor's alternate form quickly built a couple of shipyards, sending out dozens of submarines to build an underwater economy. there was only space for a score or so of larger buildings on the island, so Taylor utilized it and then upgraded it to five advanced air factories and fifteen orbital launch facilities. If she could just get off onto another planetoid she should be able to produce a large enough force to encourage Scion into combat.

Before she knew it, her commander form was being towed off planet, courtesy of an orbital lander and she was on her way to the moon. While she was sure she was detected, the hundreds of fighters she had accompanying her seemed to keep anyone from following too closely. Below, her fleet surrounding the island continued to grow, awaiting for Scion's inevitable arrival.

When she arrived, a new door was opened at her location and a shelter erected, courtesy of a Cauldron cape. After building a few things she headed into the shelter, barely fitting her massive frame inside the atmospheric container. As she shifted back her construction units continued expanding on the Moon with the intent of having hundreds of orbital launch facilities simultaneously constructing a fleet of satellites and orbital fighters to take the fight directly to Scion.

The meeting of the Triumvirate and Cauldron had never been so jovial. Doctor Mother looked like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders, Alexandra was throwing back a glass of bubbly, Legend and Eidolon were sharing a bottle of nice scotch and Contessa was taking some very well deserved time off, building a castle of cards.

Taylor was watching it all unfold bewilderedly.

It was Alexandra who let her in on it. "We've known for some time that Scion was going to destroy the world." the grandest of all heroines had informed her. "And none of us had any expectation of surviving it."

_Taylor's orbital lasers had blotted out the morning sun on the coast of America. Not completely of course, but many people had used the old pinhole trick to see the layer of satellites between them and the sun._

"Scion was going to eat us." Alexandra continued. "He took our powers when we died and consumed them."

_The two hundred and eighty thousand beams of light had launched down and boiled the sea. Her fleet below Scion, shooting and trying to damage him had been annihilated in the very first strike of the orbital weapons._

"And when he was finished harvesting us for our powers, he was going to destroy the world to make sure he got everything out of it." the slightly tipsy heroine finished with a smile.

_Some satellites had fired over a hundred times before Scion managed to rise up out of the gravity well and take the fight to the waiting Avengers._

"Even if we're stuck here for now, or we have to evacuate this earth to a new one…" Alexandra's happy look faded a little. "It's still better than dead."

_The wreckage from the fight could be seen without telescopes, well, when the sky wasn't overcast from the boiled ocean. Which in large portions of the world, it was. Hundreds of thousands of craft had noticeably consumed the moon in the need to create drones to take on Scion causing disruptions in the ancient tidal system._

"We'll probably have to evacuate, but think about that for a second." Alexandra said with an upbeat smile. "No pollution! new planet! more resources!"

_Taylor's control over her units wasn't as absolute as she'd like. Go here (approximately), shoot that, patrol around here. They weren't much use to moving orbital wrecks around or removing debris._

"But, there's that tinker down in Australia that specializes in magnetism, we could probably get him to make something. Strap it to one of your units and then suck up everything in the sky." Alexandra trailed off from her musing thoughts.

_Most of her units had self destructed on the way back to the moon, so she didn't cause any more destruction._

Legend looked over, "Parties over already?" said the man with a resigned smile.

_But there was a few left up there, on the reduced hulk of the nearest orbital._

Eidolon nodded at them before vanishing in a blast of light.

_The doorway to the alternate world was still pumping resources through as needed._

"Guess So." Taylor murmured.

_An engineer began to build._


	4. The Long Trek Effect

January

The Locker had been the worst moment of her life. But also the most defining one as well. As she was cocooned in there with the rank smell of decaying blood and other assorted defilement, Taylor had come to terms with herself. She had felt peace and forgave who she was for being her self.

It's the little things that can change the world.

In this case, that morning's breakfast. She'd gotten some on the way to school instead of at home. She'd eaten a rolled up crepe with scrambled egg and bacon with a bit of cheese and it had been delicious. She'd felt guilty about that, probably not the healthiest thing in her diet and trying to stay in shape - what little shape she had.

But the locker…

She'd forgiven herself for it. Came to terms with the fact sometimes she needed a little bit of outside help to balance herself, but sometimes she could do it too.

Hours later when someone finally opened the locker, she was gone.

February

The first thing she remembered was looking down at her own body.. She was quite well nourished, fitter than she'd ever been before. The scars she used to have were was a little bit chilly. The toga she was wearing only descended to her thighs, though the straps of her sandals rose to her calves.

When she looked up, she had raised her eyebrows and stepped to the side. The car approaching towards her swerved around where she had been and left unhindered. The faint sounds of abuse dissipated as it drove away.

She was at the Boardwalk. Home was that way. It was time to go.

The walk took a little while, at first there was no rush, but as time moved on her memories resurfaced and she became aware that the date might not be the same day, though why Taylor thought that was beyond her right now. Her walk ascended into a jog. Then as her home appeared in the distance, a run.

The front door was locked. She knocked. No response. Should she break in? Around to the back door. That door was locked too.

There was a key.

To the side of the house. Next to the coal chute, not immediately visible from anywhere. under the house there was a key. She took it, inside the house wasn't quite as clean as she left it. She rushes upstairs and checks her Dad's room. He's not there. Stress.

Danny Hebert has a job. He works in a union. He could be at his job.

He had a phone. There was a phone in the house. She rung. He answered.

"Dad?"

In the month since re-appearing, she'd been looked at by a lot of people, but Taylor had soon put a stop to that. Danny was just so glad to have her at home. The school had suspended the other three girls involved in the incident for two weeks, but nothing else had been done to them. That rankled a little bit, but soon there was more important things on her mind.

Taylor tested out of school. She only just passed history, and english. But her science and maths subjects were high enough to compensate. The school board didn't want her to graduate so soon after what had happened it seemed, they had tried very hard to block it. Taylor thought that it made a little sense in a twisted sort of way, to give the school time to try and get her not to badmouth it if she was ever interviewed and asked about the place.

She hadn't retreated home for long. It had been just a day or two. She had started building things there and swiftly ran out of resources. Recognizing the need for more led to her scrounging a scrap yard for parts.

Something came to her. Was she a tinker? It was seeming likely.

Looking at her work, none of it seemed particularly arcane to her. The battery was better than current ones by an order of magnitude, sure, but it was definitely reproducible. In fact, there was enough chemicals in the basement she could enhance another motorbike battery.

An hour and a half later when Danny came home and saw the latest things she had been doing he decided that they needed a little talk about how she was going to afford to keep on buying things. Like the replacement for the microwave she'd disassembled that morning.

April

She was armed. A couple of stun weapons and a plasma thrower.

A taser, souped up with extra battery for hand to hand combat, a pistol sized Electrical arc thrower (which truly didn't give the weapon justice, it was more of a electrically carried neural & nerve inhibitor that operated in a phased wavelength to penetrate armor and migrate through flesh to reach the neural system).

The plasma caster was the size of a rifle. It looked more like a railgun though. It wasn't hugely damaging, but the heat penetration was quite thorough, a shot to the chest should put someone out of action for a month or more, a couple of shots would probably damage them enough that they'd die.

Which is why Taylor had a belt with a dozen metal vials on it. Each contained a slow dissolving foam that could be shoved down into someone's lungs to sooth the internal burns and grant them (limited) breathing capabilities for a few hours. Long enough for proper medical help to arrive. Modified from the recipe that Dragon had made a while back to be liquidish and dissolve on contact with internal fluids. A person might have trouble constricting their chest, but the air would still flow into their lungs as it dissolved against them.

Finally, on the belt. two grenades, two cans of pepper spray, four interchangeable batteries for the arc thrower and plasma caster. Four minute recharge time, three recharges per charge. Electrical arcs would wipe out anyone in a dozen metres. Pepper spray as normal with a directed battery powered nozzle to add an extra three metres rang as a jet or increase spray to a radius of two metres.

Total cost, $120,000. You'd think that was pretty cheap, and you'd be right. Taylor had sacrificed firing rate, quality and ammunition to keep the price down as much as possible. The arc thrower would only fire once a second (and considering what happened if you shot someone too many times, Taylor was fine with that) and the plasma twice a second. Both weapons had battery clips that would power the devices for between a dozen and a score of shots each.

She was defended. Her outfit, nothing painted was most prominently a plate armored vest. Flexible, bulky and exposed circuitry was everywhere to power the projection field she needed.

The electrically charged light plating that covered the rest of her body would shock anyone who actually managed to touch her.

Total cost, $38,000. A few precious metals, a few bits and pieces of expensive custom made circuitry. A lot of hours in the basement-workshop.

She was augmented. The armor plates were jointed like an exoskeleton, on the inside, pressing up against the skintight suit she wore underneath, was artificial tendons. A combination of contact plates and a very expensive series of processor boards controlled the entire setup.

Wearing it was odd, she wasn't quite delayed in her motion, but there was a feeling of lag there. And gripping things was a bit chancy. Taylor had eventually given up and reinforced her weapons wherever possible instead of spending extra effort on the suit. As long as she wasn't expected to hold people she'd be fine.

The last augmentation was the helmet. it began life as a motorbike helmet, replaced the visor with bulletproof glass as a one way mirror. A projected image of a young man on the outside with voice synthesizer to go with it. A heads up display that unfortunately clashed with the image projector and let other people see the HUD. That was annoying but at least it didn't show her real face. An inbuilt phone, salvaged from a high end mobile.

Total cost, $81,000

Not a bad setup, Definitely good enough to go toe to toe with a few of the villains of brockton bay. Leet had always went to hand to hand and he'd get a shock if he did, if he could. Leet wouldn't be a problem. Kaiser and Hookwolf would be bad news, as would Lung. Oni Lee shouldn't be too bad.

You could figure out Taylor had been planning what to do with each villain. A couple of them were just simply 'Run and hide at the PRT.'

Not that she had any intentions of joining the Protectorate or Wards yet. She had other things to do. And more money to make. Legally.

Four patents. One sold, two sub-licensed, one in negotiations.

Total Income - Two million and change initially, ongoing licenses would be somewhere in the range of fifty to a hundred thousand a month as soon as her patents were integrated with the general production lines, in say, another two months. If the negotiations went the way her father was hoping, She'd be able to increase the initial to three million and one hundred to two hundred thousand a month. Of course, not all of that was accessible, yet. Danny had forced her to put well over half away for now.

If she cared, she could have thought about rubbing it into Emma's face, she was way richer than her lawyer father.

She didn't care. That was part of coming to terms with yourself as Taylor Herbert.

The Deal, capitalized, with her father had meant he didn't check what she was purchasing. That was useful. He was used to her working all night and then catching the occasional taxi over to that all night walmart down near the boardwalk to pick up a few things. So when the nebulous feeling stopped telling her that she shouldn't debut her super heroing yet, Taylor was more than ready to go, even if it was 1am on April 11th.

Quickling penning a note to say she had gone out for parts, Taylor dropped it on the kitchen table and headed for the front door, donning a concealing coat on the way and grabbing her backpack.

The computer in the basement had a timer. In eight hours it would automatically message Danny and let him know where she was from the onboard GPS on her suit.

Just in case.

The first stop was an alleyway. Taking off the coat and replacing the helmet with it took only a minute, donning the helmet and connecting it took thirty seconds.

The heads up display flickered into being. No hologram on the visor, so the HUD didn't shine outwards. To the bottom right was overall battery charge, she had nearly a hundred hours left if usage continued at current trending levels. Not a problem. Left, the RFID's of the arc thrower and the plasma caster detailed the remaining estimated shots left - 14 and 12 respectively. Both weapons were online and the thin targeting lasers were visible through the filter on her visor.

She was as ready as she needed to be.

She started walking. Flicking on the infrared lights attached to the shoulders flooded the street in front of her, the camera taking the image and superimposing it on her vision. As she walked through towards the docks Taylor idly looked at the buildings with the intent of taking one for her own. Or her business to own, she'd need a company location soon. before long she found the locations no longer of sufficient quality, the only people on the streets being unconscious drunks, whores and gang members. In the poor lighting, Taylor was easily able to skirt past those she saw as she moved deeper into the Docks.

Ahead was a group of gang members, one of them lighting up a cigarette. They all wore the same two colors. Taylor flicked off the night vision for a moment to figure out that it was Green and Red.

That cemented it, Azn Bad boys.

More members came out of the two story building and gathered on the street. The night vision made them look serious, angry. After a moment Taylor realized that they were, no one was talking. they pulled back into a rough semicircle as the boss stepped out, he wore an ornate metal mask over his face and wasn't wearing a shirt to go with his dark flowing pants.

Lung.

Successfully fought entire teams of heroes. Managed to stay out of jail. Gradual transformation powers that granted him pyrokinesis.

She'd planned for this. She could do it.

But not at where they were.. Definitely not there. Taking him down in front of his own clubhouse? that spelt trouble that could come to get her, or at least possibly others being inside and taking shots at her.

He started to talk. Taylor skittered closer, turned off her near infrared spotlights to point a smaller handheld laser at them. As she held it as steady as possible on the ground beneath their feet she listened to the laser amplified sound.

"the children, just shoot. Doesn't matter your aim, just shoot. You see one lying on the ground? Shoot the little bitch twice more to be sure. We give them no chances to be clever or lucky, understand?"

Most of the people there had quickly murmured their assent and started moving about. The light amplification system wasn't on so she had to quickly flick over to that to see their hands duck into holsters and waistbands, they had drawn guns and knives.

It looked like they were coming this way. Taylor retreated quickly, back into the shadows and between buildings. As she shadowed the group for a block the young hero to be spotted a two story building with a flat top and a fire escape on a corner, as soon as the group passed she sprinted for it and climbed up the escape. When she reached the top she checked the rooftop and found it abandoned, taking a spot near the corner she grabbed one of the grenades and primed it for remote detonation.

She could throw that far. She had to throw that far. They were about to get past her. To the kids.

She took three steps and threw the grenade at the group. It bounced a couple of times and rolled to the left of the group. She sent the signal. A flash of light that momentarily polarized the visor unleashed on the group and over a dozen fell, including Lung. A second and she was laying down with the plasma caster aimed at them. Seven people standing.

A shot of glowing read heat contained in a magnetic bubble.

Six, one on the ground gasping for breath as his burnt lungs pained him.

A second shot, they dove for cover, they understood what this was.

Five, he'd been hit in the stomach region and was cradling his stomach in agony.

A third shot, last one into cover.

Four, he'd collapsed just a meter away from the rusted out car that another had made it to.

Got a good shot on that last one.

Drawing the pistol she pointed it towards the car and fired quickly, the underslung infrared laser lighting up exactly where the beam of electricity hit. The ganger pressing himself to the car for cover screamed and collapsed.

Three.

A second shot of the pistol took out the second last.

The last one began to run.

She picked the rifle back up, lined up the sights for the longer distance shot. Fired.

None.

This was a success.

She descended to the ground.

When she got home at four am that morning, she found her dad in the basement, watching blankly at the turned off screen.

"We need to talk." he said, in the deadest voice she had ever heard.

And they did.

It was a long discussion. He didn't go into work that day. There were some parts where he almost seemed angry, some where he was just disappointed. Mostly his eyes stayed hurt.

But they needed to talk, and not stop for anything.

He brought up the dangers. She brought up the features of the suit, the improvements she was going to make, the weaponry she could make.

He brought up the Simurgh. How the endbringer hunted down technology useful to it to use it again and against humanity. How all of her technology could be used that way. Taylor threw up her hands, she couldn't control the Endbringers and it'd be near impossible to ensure her escape if Simurgh hunted her.

He thought the Protectorate would be able to ensure it.

She didn't.

He pointed out names, Dragon, Gate, other teleporters, other thinkers. Precogs. the PRT had been better with predicting the endbringers. And they could remove her before the Simurgh arrived.

It was Nine Am.

She caved, sort of.

They rung.

It was answered, and negotiations begun.

Director Piggot was a _mean_ negotiator. The PRT wanted a cut of everything. Taylor told them to go shove themselves in a locker and counter offered that they could have access to all patents that she released at a reduced cost for use (but definitely not selling of anything they made).

They counter offered with more crap, the call was conferenced. Two other directors joined, Dragon joined. Armsmaster joined.

There was more discussion. Taylor wanted the chance to check out some other tinkers works to see if she could reverse engineer them. Dragon offered a couple of her suits and bits and pieces from projects. Director Andrews and Piggot objected thoroughly, she wasn't Protectorate yet.

Negotiations stalled.

A meeting was arranged, Taylor & Danny to visit the Protectorate building in the bay.

The next day she arrived,

She thought about bringing parts. Pieces, something she was working on. Proof of what she could do. Eventually she decided against it. Her patents spoke for themselves already.

They arrived as part of a tour group. Left the tour to go to the bathroom. Took another turn around the corner. Went to a security checkpoint, went inside. Up an elevator.

The Meeting room was huge. Thirty people or more could have sat in it easily.

Four did. Armsmaster, Director Piggot, Director Tagg, Public Relations Officer Eleanore.

On the screen was a face, Dragon.

Introductions over they sat down and Armsmaster handed over a small box and a magnifying glass. The directors looked unhappy but gave her a few minutes to look at the internal pieces.

It was a combination of miniaturization and a spacial distortion field.

She told Armsmaster that he was a hack and he didn't understand what he was doing properly.

Dragon's image flickered, Director Piggot scowled, Director Tagg smirked, Eleanore frowned.

Armsmaster's face went red.

She explained, in the most basic words she could manage, on the occasions she was unable to find a word in english she would make up one and then defined it. At first he was going redder and scowling more, then it leveled off. The rest of the room's faces were blank, uncomprehending. The redness in his face receded. She continued speaking. The scowl vanished under pursed lips. She finished and he nodded.

Dragon said that her remotes were building an experimental unit based off what Taylor had said.

Armsmaster said he'd be making changes to his halberd tonight.

Tagg mentioned it would be rude of she patented that, Taylor agreed.

They wanted to know her limits. She didn't know, they fired things off at her and she thought about them before confirming she thought she could do it. The room grew quiet, unsettled.

Chief Director Costa Brown, head of the PRT was conference called in.

Taylor and Danny went outside to have a break, a discussion.

They returned. Dragon was still on the screen. Director Costa-Brown was now in the room with a cape who vanished into thin air, a teleporter.

"_What do you want, to work with us?"_

Evacuation from the Simurgh should it even approach her location.

Taylor kept everything she invented, unless she decides otherwise

She worked wherever she wanted.

She'd reverse engineer their stuff occasionally for ¼ ownership of the resulting patent.

Director Costa-Brown's face remained passive.

Taylor started explaining. She didn't think she was like other tinkers. She thinks she has… more. Enough to build all the other Tinker's projects, enough to understand them and teach others to as well.

She could afford to purchase her own tools, her own resources. Soon enough she was going to be one of the richest people on earth in her own right. She didn't need anything from the PRT or the Protectorate except ensuring that Simurgh didn't read her mind and get everything.

She had strong suspicions that she'd be able to reproduce other tinkers work without looking at it.

Deleted Segment One

Director Piggot made some comments about her using her powers for personal gain. Taylor ignored her quite thoroughly and was quite unreasonably pleased when Costa-Brown asked her to leave.

The negotiations begun again. Danny was in his element, negating some things, expanding on others.

Eventually the group came to a decision that they all disliked equally, more or less. the absent Director Piggot would be most likely to dislike it. Her loss.

The local facility and one other of the PRT's choice would be expanded, half at PRT cost, half at Taylors. Her work would be done there, where a heavy Hero element would be present at all times to protect her work and her.

Any other facilities she wanted upgraded would be at Taylors cost - with the exception of replacing a destroyed or abandoned facility which would be again at fifty/fifty.

Taylor would pay to use PRT resources for any work not done for the PRT or protectorate. The rates for use of PRT resources seemed too high for Taylor, but her father assured her they were quite reasonable.

The PRT had the right to ask for up to half of her time for any purpose at all, but would not receive ownership of any patents developed in this time barring reverse engineering other tinkers works. They would receive goods constructed by her for them though - and would replace/purchase any resources required.

The PRT would - on any motion of the Simurgh, immediately have a teleporter at her position and remove her if it even looked like it might be heading in her direction. Or if it constructed any portal machinery.

The PRT would, on her behalf, seek permission from Earth Aleph for her to move there as a temporary resident if required, complete with body guard squad. Taylor was to be made aware that any demands Earth Aleph made, she would be meeting personally.

The final agreements were the ones that Taylor disliked the most.

Taylor would not be using her own equipment again for heroing without it passing all the tests the PRT wished to perform on it.

Taylor would not be doing any solo hero work, not even in a preschool for PR. If she did any heroing she'd be with a fully fledged Protectorate member at all times who she had to obey - This would be renegotiated when she left the wards and joined the Protectorate.

Borth Director Costa-Brown and Danny were solidly against her doing any sort of Hero-antics at all. It was Taylor who put her foot down. She wanted to be a hero and they were not going to be stopping her.

They could definitely make it hard though.

She'd have to sign a modified agreement to be subsidiary of the wards. More or less able to participate on base, but needing extra permission and assigned to no roster for patrols. She'd have to ask for each one and only be able to go if there was a Protectorate member capable of taking her on.

All this was there,to be written up by a lawyer that her father knew. All of it rode on one little caveat.

She had to prove that she could do everything that she said she could.

May

The construction was almost done. Two patents leased out for indefinite use. Three sold. The PRT was good for getting a patent approved quickly at least.

And they had done the sneaky by getting a cape in to do the remodeling. Evidently he could do some sort of matter relocation. Couldn't change what it was, but the raw materials were all delivered and put into place and installed in a few short days.

She hadn't even met half the wards yet.

She was due to do so this afternoon. That would be exciting.

Her armor had been upgraded three times. The mesh underlayer was tinker made from down near california, She'd sent notes back to the tinker on how to improve his work as thanks. The suit itself was now multi-layered, a thinner titanium base frame held the pseudo muscles and the control systems. The replaceable multi layered armor plates were attached to hardpoints all along the frame to form the outer layer. The helmet was now a custom made job with extra features and when donned, fixed to the suit so she couldn't have her neck broken.

The main room of the laboratory had been sealed three days ago and now contained the majority of her equipment and ready gear. Her rifle & pistol were off being tested, thoroughly, by Miss Militia.

She probably wasn't going to get those ones back. Well, she would. After Miss Militia managed to replicate them. But not before.

That was okay, the little ionized superconductor she was working on would make those more or less obsolete for her anyway.

Kid Win popped his head in again, He'd been visiting a lot since he found out about her. Taylor found him endearing, like a puppy. He had confessed, maybe the fifth time he visited? about his hero, his inspiration and how he'd been trying to follow in those footsteps. Taylor had applauded it at first, but it hadn't taken long to note his power lay in differing directions.

That was interesting. She would have to look into that later. When she had some better equipment. But in the meantime, she could at least check what came easier to him.

They spoke, they talked. She didn't get anything, he liked to build things, he liked to make lots of things. Often found it hard to build specific things.

The briefing of what she could expect as tinker didn't help her pin it down. Neither did what she knew, or didn't know she knew.

They worked together for the afternoon. He looked at her equipment making crystals and suggested some improvements that made a lot of sense and she offered him the resources to do it. She reviewed his latest equipment and the upgrades he put into the hover board, they were reaching the limit of what could be done with his equipment until the first batch of control crystals were ready - or without some heavily miniaturized circuitry, easier to use the crystals.

That was cool.

Reaching the limits of current technology meant an influx of information. Which way she could go, new technologies she could pioneer.

The Crystalline system was the best though. It could be made rugged, serve in multiple ways and most importantly. Wasn't heavily dependant on rare materials. The maximum Processing & storage power of it was multiple orders of magnitudes above what she was making now, but as her technology spread and she refined it, she would be able to reach further.

Did she mention that it was rugged? basically zero maintenance.

Kid Win had left, she hadn't noticed. Have to apologize later.

It was meet the wards time. One of the Protectorate came down, took her up. First meeting would be supervised, she was valuable.

Taylor wore her armor. She had a name, She'd use it for this. Even the public relations department, _Aaron, Glen, Eleanore,_ were all right with the name.

_Uplift._

Just a word, but it meant what she was going to do. What she wanted to do to peoples spirits, to teach those who were here. To make the world better, not just for her purposes either.

She was going to be that which uplifted the world.

But first, meeting everyone.

She knew Kid Win, had met Aegis and Gallant once. The others, not at all. Kid Win had been in a depth of trouble the first time he had barged in trying to meet her.

She liked him.

Aegis and Gallant had been walking through an area she was in with her minders as they went to a meeting, they had stopped and greeted her, introduced themselves. Not much chit chat before she was late and had to go.

But they had been friendly. Which was good.

The PRT employee mentioned the itinerary, though if she wanted at any time it could change. Meet the wards, have lunch together, begin her on training for the afternoon.

She hadn't needed to exercise since her trigger. The training was to work with the wards. Just people in general.

She stepped in through the door.

The new Ward, Uplift entered and Clockblocker let out a low whistle of admiration.

She was bronze, maybe a little darker. Plate armor covered her from head to toe. greenish blue scale mail could be seen here and there at jointed locations, Black mesh at a couple more. A silver mirrored visor on the bronze coloured helmet. A thoroughly professional looking outfit.

She looked intimidating to him, like a Knight from a legend more than one of reality in ages past. She paused in the doorway and shifted slightly.

She looked like she could wrestle a bear and win.

She was uncomfortable and he could see it, and for extra measure, he was probably at fault for that.

She blushed, the sight unseen by her helmet. The other wards, they were all there. They turned and faced her and she fidgeted in response from the attention.

"Hi, I'm Clockblocker." He smiled behind his mask, the cloth moving but still hiding his expression, but his stance was open, welcoming. "Awesome to meet you." He held his arm out and she grasped it. Shaking it, carefully watching the readout of her HUD to check how much pressure she was putting on the grip.

"I'm Uplift, I'm happy to be here."

His grin widened at her response as he continued holding her hand for a fraction too long. "Now how did you get that amazeballs costume past Eleanore? she had a fit when she saw mine!"

She almost laughed involuntarily at the thought of Michelle letting her out in anything less. "Eleanore was actually asking me if I could add anything more to it."

"Kid Win, but you know that already!" Kid win pushed Clockblocker to the side. "good to see you here T-.. uhhhplift"

A couple of snorts caused Kid Win turned red and spluttered at his near miss. "Sorry Uplift, I totally forgot about the identity thing. I hadn't seen your hero outfit before!"

"Stop hogging the new girl already Kid," said Aegis with a friendly smile that could be seen through the gaps in his rusty red helmet that concealed the contours of his face quite well.. "Aegis, I hope we'll work well together."

Uplift shook his hand as well before handing her over to the next person, "Browbeat, I like your armor" said the dark blue spandex clad hero, Taylor couldn't quite make out what his expression was under the full face mask.

"Thank You," was all she could think to say. next was Shadow Stalker who merely humphed and shook her hand tersely before, no pun intended, stalking off. Taylor looked at her departing back wide eyed. "Did I do something to her?"

Vista moved closer, her white and green skirt shifting dizzily with every step. "No, she's not a nice person." She smiled under her mask and tried to shift back to a more genial atmosphere. not bad for a girl of that age "I'm Vista, I hope we can be friends."

Taylor knelt down on one knee opposite her and depolarized her visor, to show the young girl her face. "I think we could manage that."

Judging by Vista's smile, that was exactly the right thing to say.

Waiting politely for her to be ready from polarizing her faceplate, stood the last person, "Gallant. I think you'll fit in here just fine."said the silver clad boy. Vista looked up at him with a demure blush that gave Taylor another unseen smile.

"As most of you are going to see me maskless sooner or later in my laboratory" Uplift trailed off as she reached up to her helmet triggering the release mechanism. "My name's Taylor."

There were smiles and a second round of introductions made. Dean, Gallant, going first, Missy,, Vista going second, Browbeat revealing himself to be a boy named Andrew, clockblocker doing a little dance before showing his red hair and proscribing himself to be the all might Dennis, Aegis pulling his helmet off to show his tanned face and introducing himself as Carlos.

The screens of a computer setup flashed yellow in the corner of her vision then a raucous sound blurted over the speakers. The wards scrambled for their masks, pulling them over their faces and Taylor followed their actions.

A moment later Miss Militia & Director Piggot stepped in, "Good Morning Miss Militia, Director Piggot." Gallant immediately pronounced.

Miss Militia smiled in return before glancing around. "Good morning to you too," She started to frown. "I was told all the wards were here?"

Clockblocker piped up, "Shadowstalker left after introducing herself."

Miss Militia had enjoyed the playtime with Taylor's weaponry. The arc thrower was several steps up from Kid Win's laser pistols and she was pleasantly surprised when her power made the jump and copied it as it hadn't done the same for any other energy weapon. The plasma caster had also been able be duplicated too, which was two oddities that stood out to Hannah.

Hannah had never figured out what made her powers choose a weapon to duplicate for personal use. Most ammunition bearing weaponry would get done automatically, but it was very rare that she could get an energy weapon. She had previously only had three that she could use and even then, they resisted coming out. To find two more was good news, and for extra measure, they weren't hard to grab out of thin air.

Which brought her to now. She didn't understand it herself, but the waves of excitement from people around the world as Taylor Hebert's technological advances were being released (and in record time) made her think that maybe the break between what she could hold, and what she could have wasn't just that they were energy weaponry, but if the technology behind the weaponry was not tinker based….

Which led to interesting thoughts about how complex the other energy weapons were and what about them was reproducible and what wasn't.

But that was thoughts for later. Now, Shadow Stalker had ditched a team bonding session again, and she felt the urge to chase down the girl to let her know her thoughts on the matter. They weren't positive though and Hannah would refrain until she was in a suitable mood to phrase them better.

But that wasn't now either. The wards in front of her, Director Piggot beside her. Taylor. The girl who wasn't going to have a single person advocating her, but had Dragon on her side and others in power needing her.

There was things to be done today.

It had been day after the first official meeting of the wards when her first factory came online. Not fully automated by half, a lot of things could have been done but Taylor & her dad had made executive decisions, Brockton Bay needed labour work for the people. It would take people away from the crime syndicates and influence the area positively.

Danny had worked a plan, six hour shifts, two more hours paid if the worker attended an hour long class and did a thirty minute test afterwards.

To be honest, it wasn't cutting into profits that much. Especially as anyone who had existing qualifications in engineering or worked anywhere else in the last three months in a technical position had to pay to get those classes. And her customers were sending their staff en-masse as a combination of ensuring they could design the best products with her crystal processing and storage technology, or just thieving the ideas and staff of their competitors.

Four buildings nearby being renovated. Each with security hired locally to protect it. Just places to stay for people to come and take the courses her recordings taught. Employees to work the receptions. To clean the rooms, to manage the repairs.

Money, flowing into Brockton Bay.

Her technology had begun to spread. Crystal technology was useful in practically everything. Her own factory, some portions built with her own hand, much built by it's own automated systems, used it exclusively. A small fusion reactor powered the building and the production facilities within. Inside, churned out by the truckload, were crystals and adaptors for them. They were shipped out on the hour, every hour.

Seventy-two tonnes in the three days since beginning mass production.

The seed facility in Arizona would be able to produce the same amount in four more days before a portion of the factory was exorcised to start production near Los Angeles.

The seed in North Carolina would be finished in six days, before it too had a portion extracted to be moved to Georgia.

This wasn't going to be a technology that the Simurgh could bury, not now. The processing power of the technology meant that software capability would accelerate immensely. Of course, it would take some time for people to get up to speed with the coding language Dragon was making for it. But that's why it was going to be released openly in another day by Dragons last communique.

The next endbringer attack wasn't due for over a week. There was time before the possibility of the Simurgh attacking Dragon directly was critical.

A punch to the back of the head caught Taylor by surprise. Her thoughts dizzy and her head pounding she collapsed against the table as the world spun around her. "What a fucking joke."

It was Sophia. How had she gotten in here? "How the fuck did anyone think you were a fucking tinker." Sneered the girl from behind her as she pressed Taylor's face into her workbench, some loose screws digging into the young tinkers cheek.

"You ran away after I locked you in your own locker." hissed her tormentor as she gripped the back of Taylor's head cruelly. "You fucking weakling."

Spittle was dripping down Taylor's ear. She couldn't breath. Her arms were under the table, she couldn't get a grip on anything.

"Everyone knows tinkers work can't be mass produced." Sophia's breath was hot on her ear, "You're a fraud." Triumphant. As if she had discovered something amazing. "You've stolen someone else's work, Dragon's probably."

And that's when Taylor electrocuted herself.

And Sophia.

They both screamed.

The lights don't dim. They were on another circuit. The table's own circuit breaker erupted in a burst of smoke.

Taylor stood up first.

When her body had been designed, it had been done so with increased resistance to a lot of things. Not superhuman, but definately peak. For situations like this.

Her fist came down on the still spasming girl.

The girl in Shadow Stalker's costume.

Sophia was Shadow Stalker.

Turns out she did care about her tormentors after all. She punched Sophia in the face.

The repercussions weren't all that. The security cameras had been disabled by a crossbow bolt which was pretty damning.

Sophia's phone had been hacked and the messages retrieved. That had been it for Sophia. One way ticket to Juvie.

It was also proof against Emma, sufficient to use in a court case.

For a while Taylor had debated just letting it go until Missy had spoken to her, apologized for not speaking up months ago about Sophia bullying her. That had cemented it for Taylor, if she didn't do this now, Emma and Madison might bully more people in future.

Taylor had a lot of money. She could afford better lawyers than Emma's dad. She didn't even need to be at any trial, pre recorded testimony would be sufficient.

Just because she had come to terms with it, didn't mean she wasn't going to take a little bit of satisfaction on what would be happening next to Madison and Emma.

The Alarm blared in her lab. Taylor looked up and over to a nearby screen.

Leviathan.

Looking to the side she counted the pallets against the wall. Five pallets containing smaller metal boxes, up to four feet by one by two. Two pallets with larger containers, eight feet by four by four.

Twenty five medium boxes. Thirty small boxes. Eight largest metal crates.

The gantry holding up her suit in a suitably intimidating pose.

Her own armory, closed and sealed with her latest incarnation of weaponry.

Most of it wasn't sealed against water.

That limited things, the grenades would short out after being used. The plasma caster would be all but useless in the rain. The upgraded Arc Thrower would be fine. She'd have to give that to a flier. She probably wouldn't be allowed to get close enough to use it herself if the PRT had their way.

Director Piggot walked in.

Soon after eight other people did as well. Taylor had donned her armor by this time. She dragged the largest crates off the pallets and had them lined up as the eight other's arrived.

Each person signed the sheets accepting the equipment as Director Piggot looked onwards with clenched fists. They were unpowered people who were about to fight an endbringer, face to face, wearing suits of a design that were only partially tested by the PRT.

They were all volunteers.

Taylor bit her lip. She was nervous.

They donned the suits quickly, Taylor helping them out when needed while Director Piggot inputted the codes to open the other crates.

Arc Throwers, plasma casters, ripper gauntlets..

The plasma casters were only useful at short range. They were powered by the suits fusion reactors that Dragon had produced the miniaturizing field for. They wouldn't run out, but would run hot and could overload if used too often.

The Arc throwers weren't as ranged or as powerful as her latest prototype, but would still provide a decent shock.

The gauntlets were completely unlike anything she had made before. While activated, the user would be completely unable to touch anything else, the miniaturization Technology that Dragon was mass producing was enhanced by her own knowledge to produce a gauntlet that shrunk everything it touched within a radius of ten centimetres of an open hand before allowing it to resize correctly at the lower end of the palm.

Tests had seen her simple drive the gauntleted fingers into cement, the material being shrunk and torn away only to be ejected towards her as a slurry of pebbles.

Thirty seconds of operational time before a one minute cooldown.

If Dragon hadn't been producing over half the parts, the cost would have been phenomenal.

If the harder layers inside Leviathan were still susceptible to spatial distortions…

If the users don't overload them.

If. Too many If's.

They arrived late. The fight was on. The Helicopter wasn't a terribly stable platform in the downpour, but Taylor's arc thrower managed to get a couple of hits in to seemingly little effect.

A teleporter arrived and gave them armbands of Dragons, Dragon immediately asked for details and Taylor filled her in.

The Teleporter took her grenades. The heroes pulled back as Alexandria engaged, The eight volunteers jumped, Their inertial systems taking the vast majority of the four hundred foot fall off of their soft bodies. Her Hud identified her grenades being transported by a speedster to surround the Endbringer as it was being pummeled by Alexandria.

The most physical of the triumvirate was thrown away. Dragon remotely detonated the grenades.

The Endbringer, already rising, staggered and collapsed as the overlapping fields of energy cascaded over it.

It got back up and the fight continued, only, it wasn't moving properly. It's movements were no longer smooth and practiced, instead it staggered as it swiped. A hero avoided it's attack, it lurched forward to kill someone and the water image swept over them with less force than it normally would. They survived.

The eight volunteers fired a volley of the arc throwers, to no effect. Leviathan staggered towards them then turned away, it's after image rushing towards them to be successfully blocked by a shielding cape.

They switched to the Plasma casters and advanced, shooting constantly, at first the shots did nothing but as they closed the skin of the Leviathan began to boil from shots.

Their weapons overheated. Leviathan was recovering, moving faster, Legend attacked with beams that impacted it's thigh, Alexandria returned and smashed it down onto the ground.

The Eight activated their gauntlets and dove in.

Oh god that was gross.

Up to their arms in Leviathan flesh, pulped material squirting out and covering the suits lower extremities.

Leviathan squealed in a sound that had never been heard before or since and thrashed, throwing the invaders off its body and into the surrounds.

Taylor began firing as rapidly as she could with the arc thrower, drawing power from the suit as the HUD laid out data of the volunteers. Four down injured, one dead. Three good to go.

The helicopter had been almost out of fuel when Leviathan had fled. Scion had arrived bare minutes after the Endbringer had left.

The Eight had lost two, with five of the remaining six injured in various ways. The containment foam injectors had been a marvelous idea, holding the stomach of one of them in place and uncontaminated hopefully.

Director Piggot had looked happier than she'd ever been seen, which didn't sit right with Taylor. But she had to allow the other woman her victories, eight normal humans, enhanced only with technology that could be produced by normal people had fought the Endbringer Leviathan.

They had done great amounts of harm to it.

Scion had not been the one to drive off the endbringer.

The City wasn't destroyed. Well, not hugely, it would still need a fair chunk of repairs though and some parts were flooded still.

That meant opportunities. Endbringers didn't seem to attack the same place twice, this could be a city to showcase what was possible.

The semi-automated factory didn't need retooling so much as reprogramming, and some instructions to the people working there of course. A couple of days of no commercial product would produce another factory. She could have that one running locally, for things directly in the city.

She needed better production methods. The automated lines controlled by the crystalline central computer was good, and as she was using the artificial musculature that she designed it was quite a bit more dexterous and capable of using human equipment than most assembly lines. But at the end of the day she was still using assembly lines of a sort.

Time to step up the game then.

It came to her immediately, multiple paths to take. One was to go straight to nanotechnology, which was looking like a good option, at least it did until she thought about the second one.

Teleporters.

Well, more matter assemblers. They could properly teleport too though, she'd need to expand down to another layer of reality though to get them working properly. Subspace was the generic sci-fi term for that right?

They'd be huge power hogs, but the benefit would be near instant construction.

Knock Knock.

The derailment of her thoughts brought Taylor's mind to a halt.

Checking the security camera (installed after Sophia) Taylor let in the Chief Director Costa-Brown and party, a fit looking woman dressed in a smart looking suit. Taylor looked at her curiously, she was french or maybe a lighter skinned italian. Her brown curly hair descended to touch the collar of the suit she wore and she looked completely at ease.

Deleted Segment 2 - replaces next paragraph.

The Director greeted her and introduced an assistant of hers, Melissa, who would be staying with Taylor for a few days to get some important work done. After a few minutes of introductions and general chit chat the Director left, leaving Melissa behind.

The two collaborated together on what the Director wanted for an hour or two, spinning out a plan for the next version of the combat suits. Heavier in weight, nearly three times the mass but no upgrades in actual armor thickness. Upgraded inertial dampeners to increase the amount of throw damage they could take. The force projector screen retuned to only respond to otherwise critical hits - it had triggered on the first couple of hits from Leviathan's water image and burnt out before it would have been useful in actually protecting the lives of the volunteers.

When confronted with that Taylor felt terrible, her mistake in the design of the suits had led to the deaths. It had taken a few minutes of Melissa talking to get Taylor back on track and feeling better about the situation. By the time three days, a dozen interruptions from various members of the wards and a trip to a school for PR was up, Melissa had grown on her quite a bit and she was sure she had made a very good impression on Melissa as well.

Which is why she had found it really odd that Melissa hadn't responded to any email or sms since. Taylor hadn't thought that accidently calling her Fortuna was that big of a deal.

When Bakuda had flipped the switch and began bombing Brockton Bay it had turned into an us vs her mentality that Taylor understood to a degree, but never learned to appreciate. Lung's second capture, this time by a group of PRT employees in her suits that had put him down quickly and locked up deeply inside the PRT, had caused his subordinate to flip her shit so to say.

And considering that she still had Oni Lee working for her, lending her bombs a little bit more.. reusability. she had long past become a menace.

It was this point where everyone had come together. Oni Lee suicide bombers were a pain.

While the majority of the Protectorate and the wards had been hunting down the ABB remnants, Piggot had tasked her with creating some method of monitoring and finding Bakuda remotely, which had led her to a project she had already laid down the foundations for previously - her teleportation.

The requirements for the units would be subatomic scanning at a local distance. Turn up the power, you'd lose the resolution but extend the range. The range needed to find Bakuda across a city.

The device took up nearly twelve square metres of space. The efficiency wasn't huge, there was massive cooling banks with chemical cooling. Although the processing and storage area was compact, the actual machinery was not. Not without some room temperature superconductors at least.

A moment.

Oh, that _would _be good for later.

But it was ready now. Functioning. And… there it was. The Radio beeps. On the far end was Armsmaster, painting his location and Oni-Lee. Got him.

They disengaged. The Machinery chugs along. Director Piggot entered the room. So too joined Clockblocker, Vista & Aegis. Taylor takes a moment to look at the stump of Aegis' arm where it was removed by one of the explosions.

Gallant had died in that one.

The screen follows Oni-lee. He bombs a place or two on his way before heading home. The screen shows what the scanner sees. It's not great resolution, but Bakuda is visible. Armsmaster joined the watchers. Taylor begins a live stream to Dragon who relays it to Legend who is taking a sniper's shot from nearly a thousand metres up. Tagging Bakuda and Oni-Lee, Taylor turned over controls to Dragon, who is routing control through Legends visor, a small virtual reality overlay for the hero.

A second window is open, focused on the targeted duo as the scan continues, signal emitters are found on her toes. she directs the signal through her hand.

Dragon identifies the dead-man bomb first.

A phone call, a cape teleports in. Dragon has a bunch of jammers, a quick search of the buildings nearby reveal a few locations. Ten minutes later they are ready to be jammed.

Legend is still floating. waiting.

The jamming commences. They haven't noticed. A slight bit of static appears on screen but doesn't stop the scanner, good to know.

Taylor's clenching her jaw in anticipation.

Legend's laser plunged through the roof, right through Oni-Lee, instant death.

She wanted to throw up as she watched.

It turned around and cut through Bakuda's Leg, severing it at the shin before reaching back and removing her hand.

The signal sent. The signal jammed. No one collateral damage.

The PRT come, Miss Militia capturing Bakuda as six Volunteers assault the building, shooting first with Arc throwers and taking prisoners later.

The factory is reprogrammed to construct the frame for the subspace scanning equipment. This one gets a visit from a presidential envoy as the PRT reports what it has done. Details, designs, limitations, enhancements are examined.

Taylor doesn't tell them that each scanner can be upgraded for another use.

The United States Military immediately places an order for all of them.

Even at the limited range, of a few dozen kilometres the battlefield applications are immense. A single device accompanying a convoy will be able to auto-detect IEDs, ambushes and more without ever being in danger.

Taylor keeps quiet about being able to lower the resolution to get more range on things that are less like their environment. She doesn't know why she does this, but feels it is important not to let anyone know at this stage.

Her mind flutters over what could be done with that, but it's like a thought refusing to form, the world slowing to a stop as her mind kicks into gear as she tries to grasp what she can do.

A half-moment later she forgets what she was thinking about and continues the conversation seamlessly.

Her father takes over negotiations for her and reports back two days later with a list of things, an order, the amount she would receive to have it done as a priority, various plots of land around the country near military bases that they would extend their patrols and security around. A large portion of their production would be delivered directly to those bases. The PRT would be receiving more suits & have more input on their design. more PRT buildings would have their own manufacturing facilities added. Dragon would be receiving a factory seed to use as she saw fit. Her laboratory was being expanded to almost double the size.

It was quite a bit of money for all that.

The factories at other locations have finished building themselves and new seeds are sent out to other locations. They're not ready to be commercially unveiled but word is getting around quietly of things soon to come.

It's a matter of time before something major occurs. She needs to be prepared and this drives her.

She hasn't left her lab since the negotiations had been passed off to her father.

She had discarded the preliminary investigation into the nanotechnology route and worked unceasingly on teleportation. The scanning device has an attached cage with an open front with multiple devices all over the frame. She's allowed no one in her lab for the last thirty hours. Taking food at the door with an improvised barrier preventing sight of further in.

She is aware, somehow, that this is the tipping point. Things will change quite dramatically when this is revealed.

She tests it. A failure, and one burnt out fusion plant.

She contacts dragon. They talk about how to improve Dragons fusion power plants. Dragon is distracted by the Slaughterhouse Nine in Brockton Bay.

She hadn't been told. She'd been in a state unfit for action anyway..

Taylor finalizes her plans for the teleporter addon, refines them and sends them to four factories across the country. One more than there are Endbringers. Production of scanners limited in range for maximised resolution with attached teleportation devices are put into production.

She sleeps in her lab.

Quite a few things came to a head while she slept.

Director Piggot had been using a scanner to locate the Slaughterhouse Nine, they had engaged twice in full attacks, each time Jack slash leading the escape and staying steps ahead of the pack.

The third, and only successful engagement, killed Shatterbird in a blitzkrieg entirely composed of eighteen armor suited volunteers, casualties occurred and now Crawler was immune to both the plasma casters and the arc throwers, his brute strength has increased in reaction to the containment foam.

Director Piggot was now convinced that there was a mole in the PRT, specifically amongst the capes that were feeding the S9 information.

Taylor is under suspicion of working with Jack Slash for being so concealed for the last few days and having access to the scanning equipment.

Deleted Segment 3

Taylor points out that she had the scanner the whole time, so if it was her the third attack would have failed too.

Piggot does not react well and has her incarcerated immediately, where she finds that some other capes are also imprisoned including Armsmaster, Miss Militia and Aegis.

Two days later she is released. Director Piggot has been removed and her replacement is the newly promoted Director Calvert. All the imprisoned capes have been released, Clockblocker has been severely maimed in the meantime and the PRT volunteers have been slaughtered to a man. Their technology has been captured by the S9 who seem to have vanished in the meantime.

Coil all but rules the city with the aid of the Undersiders the Travellers and various mercenary groups, although both cape groups have lost one or more members. A villains meet was watched via scanner where they dictated terms to the remnants of Empire 88 and the ABB. Coil's subordinates ran the meeting.

Director Calvert immediately begins work with disrupting Coil.

July

The PRT has been ordered to remove itself from Brockton Bay. Director Calvert resigns due to his failure. The city is being condemned and large portions of the population are evacuating. Taylor is forced to upgrade her local factory to complete automation and to lockdown all entrances and exits to prevent theft or takeover. Danny relocates to New York, with Taylor.

Using her teleportation technology to technically remain within her contracts with the PRT of working in her lab, Taylor has remained. Hiring a second large warehouse she has outfitted a dozen trustworthy volunteers with upgraded personalized versions of her armored suits. Adding an extra foot in height to each person, these new suits look more like space marines than the previous knights in style and are much more heavily armed, armored and capable.

The Undersiders, led by Tattletale and consisting of Imp, a maimed Regent, Bitch and Leet flip to her side, accompanying them is a small girl named Dinah. Using the scanner & software made by Kid Win before he left, she verifies their flip and admits them entry.

Tattletale fills Taylor in with everything she knows. Coil is Thomas Calvert, he's taken over the city and has always been a cape, able to work in multiple realities at once, choosing which reality to keep real when he is finished.

He had kidnapped Dinah to user her burgeoning predictive capabilities and to give himself an edge, which he exploited ruthlessly. Imp had managed to sway the undersiders into taking action against Coil, which had resulted in the death of Grue.

Leet had been recruited since, after Tattletale revealed that Coil had Uber killed previously.

Preparing for a proper attack, Taylor uses her own scanner technology to locate power spikes and disables two other scanning devices in the city. She meanwhile set the still active factory to produce a swarm of floating stun drones. Without workers at the factory, her automated system had filled up the available space with drones, leading to a very unpleasant suprise when Ballistic of the Travellers broke down one wall, leading to the capture of Ballistic, Trickster and Sundancer, who were all transported to another city before being awakened.

Leet's inventions seem to be self sabotaged on the second build, but with Taylor's knowledge and final overview of each one this problem has been temporarily bypassed - with the exception of he is unable to maintain his own equipment. By placing his designs directly into her scanning and construction systems however, they are able to bypass this by simply using new equipment instead of maintaining it.

Using teleportation to cross the country, Tattletale is able to pay a healer to restore Regent's missing arm and crippled leg out of her own purloined funds. She also manages to persuade the cape to grant her a resistance to her own power's setbacks, though it only increases how much she can use it before pain ensues.

The undersiders, each carrying remote targeting beacons, begin a campaign against Coil, backed by Taylor's own technology and money and Tattletales capabilities they are finding it extremely effective until it is reported that Coil was captured by Noelle.

The PRT once again took interest in Brockton Bay, with New wave returning with them. With information gained from Tattletale and disseminated by Taylor into the PRT, Noelle is adjusted to be an A class threat. As it soon becomes apparent that Coil is still alive, and ingested by Noelle that threat level was raised to S quickly.

The following battle ends with the death of Noelle, Eidolon and eight other capes from varying cities. During the combat, it is also revealed that Alexandria was the head of the PRT as Chief Director Costa-Brown.

Coil is captured. Multiple clones of Oliver have escaped, undetected due to his power of looking perfect to whoever looks at him. Possibility of other clones escaping is high.

Faultlines crew has been revealed to be killed with the exception of Shamrock, whose power of 'Luck' allowed her to escape.

Using the reveal of Alexandria to terminate her alignment with the PRT, Taylor leaves the Wards, taking Kid Win, Clockblocker and Weld with her. Many other heroes leave the PRT at this time.

Offering Tattletales help with the Case 53s, Taylor began accruing a large team of capes. With Tattletale's ability to infer, she is capable of using the scanner and teleporter/matter constructor to it's highest possibility within the current boundaries of materials and construction limits to undo a lot of damage to a few case 53's and to help out with many problems others are having with using their powers.

The Death of Noelle & the removal of Coil the government has rescinded the condemnation of Brockton Bay. As the police and citizens start returning to the city, they find it surprisingly quiet and free of violence. The Undersiders, supported by the Dangerous Dozen - the name taken by her suit wearing security- have been consistently ensuring no violence was undertaken in their territory. Tattletales inference combined with roving sweeps of a secondary scanner identifying guns & drugs gave the team an unhealthy advantage.

As services return, Taylor takes advantage of the situation to purchase multiple city blocks opening onto the docks to create a major industrial complex. Shipping in multiple seeds from the two score of fully operational factories and paying premium to have construction capable rogues and the case 53s to help she has a large complex up and completed it shortly after Behemoths appearance.

Behometh's appearance on July 25th is the most interesting event since the appearance of the Endbringers.

It's arrival in India was predicted, but it's actions were not.

The hero killer didn't attack. A major shift in previous behavior that left the PRT reluctant to engage, instead evacuating the entire area within a radius of a hundred kilometres - including rescuing people who were too afraid to move at all from within close proximity of the endbringer.

Initial reports indicate no evacuees have been irradiated.

The Simurgh's next attack did not occur. Instead it rendezvoused with the still stationary Behemoth. scanner based surveillance revealed that it has been tending to Behemoth ever since. The arrival of the third endbringer was not completely unexpected, although the Simurgh mothering the other two was. Much controversy erupted over the decision not to use nuclear weaponry on the three Endbringers - with many precogs predicting major disaster if it were to occur.

Of major note, Scion has not attacked or even approached the Endbringers.

With the Simurgh grounded it took the world only a year before checking to see if it the telepathic endbringer would prevent further space exploration. Initial tests proved fruitful and with tinker technology leading the way, a large satellite population was launched in a relatively short time.

With the air of perceived safety, Taylor's operations expanded globally. With facilities in multiple countries and many portions of the world using crystal technology, mankind was entering a new age as new and formerly suppressed information was making it's way into the global consciousness.

As greater portions of humanity desire to expand to the stars, and more importantly, flee from earth, Taylor patents multiple spatial drives & a warp style FTL drive. She is aware she can create faster ones, but does not have the material science to implement it. With the information rendered down to current knowledge base, her drive proves incredibly useful with over a hundred major starships being built worldwide.

Scion's attack on the first warp capable spacecraft to be launched is a shock to the world. Especially when he next destroys each one under construction. In a day he went from Mankinds greatest hero to it's most hated jailer.

The Case 53s have managed to break open the blocks on Tattletales powers. Allowing her to determine Scion is the cause of all non cauldron cape powers. As the information is relayed to the PRT and then escapes to the world causing widespread chaos and riots.

As Scion starts investigating the wreckage of the Warp ships and starts backtracking where the parts come from, Taylor finds that she may now be in danger - as the source of the drive. While looking to deal with Scion she finds that her knowledge contains methods to do so, but she will not be able to have enough time to construct any way. This lead her to alternate thought paths of escape or delaying Scion which unlocked pertinent information on alternate FTL travel. In specific, devices that should be seeded on Earth.

Using an array of scanners to locate the devices she found quite a few unexpected bonuses. There was more than one device on the planet, there was two facilities that may be in operational parameters and quite a few abandoned pieces of technology around the world.

With this in mind, she heads immediately to the closest transport device, only to find it has been partially disassembled, something she hadn't thought even a tinker capable of. Taking a long shuttle ride to the next location she uses the fusion power plant to directly melt a hole down into the ice to gain access to the device. Taking the device she relocates it to an island off the american continent and begins evacuating as many people and as much equipment as possible offworld.

Scion's attack on the gate during the evacuation kills tens of thousands at the least.

Part 2

As the primary device on earth has been presumably destroyed and the secondary device is in pieces, Taylor and the three hundred and fifty thousand survivors construct a colony that may never be able to be resupplied.

With the four precognitives/inferrers that made it through the gate (Many others deciding that the other side of the world was safer than possibly going through) they find their precognition indicates that there are high chances that all of humanity on earth - and all alternate earths - will be exterminated. As the intermediate government is set up, there are many calls to not attempt to any action that may result in Scion backtracking to the colony.

Taylor's automated factories are expanded into independent automated Factory/Mining platforms, as the first bulk of resources are processed, two new minerals are discovered. Both thought to be previously impossible to exist.

The new super heavy mineral, when processed correctly, is a room temperature superconductor with massive energy enhancing possibilities. The majority of the problems plaguing Taylor's advancement in technology have now handily been solved. Further analysis unlocks a whole swathe of knowledge about what uses this particular mineral can be put to. Including making the devices to travel between planets.

The second material is an ultra hard base metal that when alloyed correctly allows for structures stronger than anything previously made - tinker tech or not. By combining the two new metals her knowledge informs her of the ability to absorb energy and take extreme physical damage. With the correct design, it will even be possible to power her own defences off incoming energy attacks that impact the hull.

Ingenious.

Over the following months, her facilities continue to replicate as Taylor produces new designs and technologies based off the new materials. With the addition of the new conductor, she is capable of enhancing the scanners to multiple lightyear range and no longer needs a cage for her teleportation. With this in mind Taylor constructs a rescue fleet. Eight ships each equipped with a hyperdrive capable of faster than light travel that can cross the galaxy in days.

Upon her arrival, Taylor had immediately noted that Scion had slaughtered almost half the world's population and had been travelling between parallel worlds. Taking the brief reprieve from its presence, the eight ships encircle the planet and retrieve as many people as possible before evacuating with full holds of panicked evacuees - only the judicious use of temporal slowing on the kidnapped refugee's grants the ships the time to retreat back to the new world.

Although nearly a billion people have been 'rescued' and delivered it took days before sufficient infrastructure was in place to support them. As the new refugees were teleported directly to their accomodations,Taylor was busy producing a series of neutrino ion generators to power the world, and more importantly, the gateway device.

When the ships return to earth for a second snatch and grab, they discover Scion is waiting for them. With Judicious use of micro hyperjumps they keep away from the being but find themselves unable to rescue the last billion survivors on Earth. One ship is destroyed in the final attempt to reach Earth but the Hyperdrive denial devices work as required and prevent Scion from capturing the drive.

With the failure of being able to retrieve further humans from Earth, Taylor is forced to confront the main problem. Scion.

In response to her need, her knowledge responds. Designs to collapse dimensions and universes are revealed to her but would take decades of work to produce the tools required to build them. She needed a shortcut, and found one.

Overpowering the gate device, Taylor and a team of thirty armored parahumans travel through to another location. On the far side is an abandoned alien facility, submerged deep under the ocean. As the Installation's life support begins to fail due to having three nearly depleted power supplies and a further two completely missing, Taylor undocks the installation and floats it to the surface revealing an entire city. The scale of the location is awe inspiring. Tattletale's glance over it reveals it to be over 27 kilometres in diameter with much of it damaged from the collapsing force projection screens.

It will take a lifetime to explore, two more to repair. More.

It's also the final piece of the puzzle for Tattletale. She inferred what had happened to Taylor. Not who did it, but what had happened.

She didn't tell.

Taylor interacts with the control panels in the tower, eventually transporting the exploration team to a larger command center. when she arrived, Taylor found it damaged by long submersion, but with her own crystalline technology it only took a few hours to produce an interface that the team could interact with the city.

Insufficient power was immediately a problem, but the solar panels covering the city soon had sufficient incoming power to start initial repairs. With the cities own communication system operational, Taylor was able to send a single transmission back to the colony - named Port in her absence.

Tattletales browsing of the city database has taught her their language, and more importantly. The possible location of secondary power sources. Their trip proves fruitful and they soon return with a new power source, a crystal bottle containing a miniature universe. After connecting it to the cities systems Taylor is able to create drones to build dozens of neutrino ion generators across each spur of the city.

While insufficient to fully power the city, it is sufficient to power the repairs - with an estimated time of completion of nearly two centuries. With this in mind, Taylor concentrates her search of the database and locates construction locations capable of constructing the equipment she needs to defeat Scion.

The other parahumans present have not been idle. Tattletale has learned the language and located eight more locations that may contain power crystals, after expeditions mounted, there was two found bringing the cities power up to three fifths maximum. With a second city located - albeit in ruins - Taylor is able to salvage portions of the other city for parts, drastically reducing the amount of time to a mere eighty five years.

At this point in time the city comes under siege by an alien species. Force projector screens are erected - preventing the destruction of the city - but repairs are delayed by eight years. An immediate counter attack is undertaken, taking several captives and fusing Weld to one of the alien space-ships. As he takes the bio-metal into his flesh Weld is granted full control of the ship, taking it over and venting the air on board and taking the ship intact.

With the acknowledgement of new enemies the Parahuman response is quick and lethal, Tattletale quickly locates a bio lab and using captured samples creates a plague to exterminate the blue skinned creatures while Regent takes control of the alien and successfully interrogates it for the history of the Pegasus galaxy, revealing that they had previously exterminated all species in the galaxy in an orgy of feasting on the fallen.

The capture of the ship and slaughter of the commanding Queen had awakened all surviving Hives with their intention to attack the city and seize it's intergalactic drive capability. With Weld being suborned into the captured ship, Taylor becomes unable to retreat to either below the ocean or leave as soon as she has completed the devices necessary for Scion.

With this information, further knowledge is unlocked. Locating a launch bay near the central tower Taylor finds a customized shuttle with it's own power system containing another power crystal. Instead of retrieving it, Taylor and Tattletale activate the device, sending them ten thousand years into the past.

Upon their arrival they find the original humanoid creators of the City and the transport devices in the midst of sinking the city. Tattletales powerful arguments persuade a large portion of the survivors to come forward to their time and take the fight to Scion, revealing that the Golden man was going to destroy all alternate versions of Earth in his feeding frenzy and eventually, consume all energy available in all available universes. With this information some of the Alterans depart onwards to their next destination, but a group of forty decided to come with Taylor and Tattletale for varying reasons.

While the shuttle had been confiscated and destroyed, the group planned to place themselves into cryogenic freeze surrounded by a temporal stasis field. Taylor and Tattletale retrieve three full charged crystal power cells, two directly removed from the city's power station and a spare one that was in storage. Returning to their own time, the sleepers awake.

Of particular note was the malfunction of Taylor's freezing system and her temporal stasis field just a year before the designed awakening time.

With the influx of new knowledgeable people, Weld was docked to one of the city spurs and the fully charged city burns through an entire power crystal to directly modify matter via the teleportation devices to perform a quick and thorough repair job.

As the previous citizens of the city investigate the powers of the Parahumans they immediately put Tattletale to work on several formerly abandoned projects, when physical limitations cause too much pain to the young woman, she becomes enhanced with a small dose of nanotechnology performing immediate repairs granting her effective unlimited use of her power, which was used to great effect.

Weld was extracted from the Wraith ship and a replaceable command column built for him to interface with. The city Atlantis began its trek back to the refugee colony with an ETA of two weeks.

On Earth, Cauldron had been busy, spreading the remaining survivors across multiple realities and resisting as possible. While casualties are harsh for each conflict, Scion appears to be mostly busy elsewhere. This has led to a group meeting between some of the surviving groups, Cauldron led by Doctor Mother, the Yangban whose representative was nameless, the PRT who led by Legend and finally the Avengers, formerly known as Case 53's, led by a walking skeleton named Anorexia.

The meeting is short, but the intentions clear. Cauldron was providing as many powers as possible to anyone who wanted them for any reason. the remnants of the PRT training everyone who takes the powers. The Yangban cooperating and inducting many into their power sharing and have agreed to cease attempts to brainwash anyone who would work with them, though they demanded all those who worked with them to train thoroughly. With the ability to reverse time for several seconds, the Yangban have received quite a few converts.

Many of Cauldron's vials are being sent directly to the Yangban.

All of the groups are hoping Taylor will return.

A mere day into the journey, the Alterans working directly with Tattletale complete the wormhole drive previously abandoned some years before the war. This drive activated and the city transported instantly to the refugee colony. On arrival it was found the colony has been named Port and the automated construction has built a city that spanned over five hundred kilometres in diameter.

While much of the ground based city remained unused, the manufacturing facilities built into half or more of the buildings means that micro factories can be leveraged on a macro scale. After designating construction of ammunition for Atlantis, Taylor immediately set to constructing her own required weaponry.

With precogs and Inferrers reviewing the suitability of her work, Taylor produces multiple classes of scanning devices to locate Scion. With each deployed drone her hypothesis continues until Tattletale confirms: Scion has always been a projection from another universe.

With this in mind, and the basic uselessness of utilizing the Alteran's prebuilt dimensional gateway, Taylor creates a series of dimensional hopping drones and sends a horde of sensor, communication & teleportation drones back to earth. Transporting them instantly across the globe she waited. During this time Cauldron contacted her and communication between the groups began. Evacuation was Taylor's priority but Contessa persuades her not to do so, as to lure Scion back to earth.

Scion returned to this universe. As soon as he returned the drones converged on him and invasively scanned him. When Taylor realized that Scion's Quantum signature was an amalgamation of multiple dimensions she was at last given an opportunity to triangulate Scion's body.

Cooperating with Cauldron to gain access to Doormaker, Taylor seeds thousands of realities with multiple weaponised and scanning drones. For each reality Scion entered, Taylor's drones would damage the projection, modifying the Quantum signature as it aligned with the local reality. After a hundred modifications Taylor's equipment and scanning identified a short range of realities that would most likely be the resting place for Scion.

At this point in time Doctor Mother grants her access to the source of Cauldron's power program. The corpse of Scion's partner. This caused great rewrites of plans and adjusted parameters and specifications for the attack, specifically on what to do against Scion.

Using nanotechnology to feed quantum signatures into Doormaker and Remote Viewer, Doormaker was able to open doors into the short branch of realities that may contain Scion. It takes only days to locate Scion's body and a direct attack planned.

Her final weapon against Scion was fired, not at his projection or his body but at the planet itself. Scion's projection vanishes on Earth Aleph.

One power crystal was added to Atlantis' systems where it promptly was utilized to it's full benefit in undoing the maximum amount of damage to Earth Bet as possible, draining it completely in the process.

Deleted Segment One

Dragon interjected and asked about AI. Taylor opened her mouth to say yes. then paused, her eyes going vacant as she stared through the screen and off into the distance.

AIs didn't stay working properly. Not ever in thirty million years. But near intelligences were okay, as long as they were shackled.

Taylor didn't realize it then, but Dragon and the Directors all caught it.

Deleted Segment Two

"Good morning Taylor." said the director with a smile. "This is Melissa, she is an aid of mine and for the next couple of days I'm going to assign her to you."

Taylor's eyebrow raised as she stared at the woman. "Nice to meet you Contessa." she said after a moment as he extended her hand.

The woman's smile didn't change an iota, "Melissa, actually." she said firmly as she grasped her hand.

Taylor expressed surprise as she realized she had said the wrong name. "Sorry, I don't know why I thought it was Contessa."

Deleted Segment 3

A trigger is activated. A phrase is spoken from her to Piggot. Taylor falls unconscious for twenty four hours.

_Jack Slash knows everything every cape knows with the exceptions of artificial capes._

The repercussions of this are not immediate. She reports this upwards immediately, it reaches Director Costa-Brown who assigns multiple capes to the area. Weld will now lead the Wardes, Eidolon will be taking lead against the S9, assisted by Battery and Whitelight.

Through monitoring, Dragon becomes aware of the commands and the report, she attempts to remove the information from her own mind but is too late.

Jack slash escapes the city, leaving a present from Bonesaw, a memory altering gas that will eventually kill all it has infected across the city, this is eventually reversed by Panacea, some casualties ensue.

Taylor's Programming

Don't attract the Simurgh until after teleportation is complete.

Precog block

Telepath block

Warnings

Contessa

?

Suprise Crossover - Stargate.


End file.
